weak and unoffending girl.'

As she spoke, she sprang from the room, her eyes flashing with indignant
fire, while her cheek, pale as death, and her heaving bosom, attested
how deep was her passion. As she turned the corner of the door, her eyes
met mine. In an instant the truth flashed upon her mind. She knew I had
overheard all that passed. She gasped painfully for breath; her lips
moved with scarce a sound; a violent trembling shook her from head to
foot, and she fell fainting to the ground.

I followed her with my eyes as they bore her from the room; and then,
without a thought for anything around me, I hurriedly left the room,
dashed downstairs, and hastened to my quarters in the Castle.

CHAPTER XIII. A NIGHT OF TROUBLE

Until the moment when I reached the room and threw myself into a chair,
my course respecting Lord Dudley de Vere seemed to present not a single
difficulty. The appeal so unconsciously made to me by Miss Bellew, not
less than my own ardent inclination, decided me on calling him out.
No sooner, however, did calm reflection succeed to the passionate
excitement of the moment, than at once I perceived the nicety of
my position. Under what possible pretext could I avow myself as her
champion, not as of her own choosing? for I knew perfectly well that
the words she uttered were merely intended as a menace, without the
slightest idea of being acted on. To suffer her name, therefore, to
transpire in the affair would be to compromise her in the face of the
world. Again, the confusion and terror she evinced when she beheld me at
the door proved to me that, perhaps of all others, I was the last person
she would have wished to have been a witness to the interview.

What was to be done? The very difficulty of the affair only made my
determination to go through with it the stronger. I have already said my
inclination also prompted me to this course. Lord Dudley's manner to me,
without being such as I could make a plea for resenting, had ever been
of a supercilious and almost offensive character. If there be anything
which more deeply than another wounds our self-esteem, it is the
assumed superiority of those whom we heartily despise. More than once
he ventured upon hinting at the plans of the Rooneys respecting me,
suggesting that their civilities only concealed a deeper object; and all
this he did with a tone of half insolence that irritated me ten times
more than an open affront. Often and often had